Black Friday dilemma: to buy or not to buy an e-reader

Is Black Friday going to be a good day to buy yourself (or someone on your holiday gift list) an electronic book reader? Not according to Farhad Manjoo, who calls e-book readers a "post-Thanksgiving bargain to avoid."

Writing for Slate, Manjoo makes reference to Amazon's Kindle, Barnes & Nobles's Nook, Sony's (upcoming) Daily Reader, new readers from Irex, and a line of colored Cool-Er readers from Interead. "This isn't a good time to buy any of them," he says. His reasoning: e-book readers are still too expensive and they're still too new. They can only get better and cheaper.

And anyway, he points out, Apple hasn't yet entered the market. "Nobody knows whether Apple will ever release a touch-screen tablet PC, and if it does, nobody knows whether the mythical device will function as an e-book reader," writes Manjoo. "But it could!"